Two interesting statues of the Bactrian princess or earth goddesses can be found both in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA and in the Louvre, Paris, France.
Stone seated female figure, late 3rd–early 2nd millennium b.c.
Central Asia (Bactria-Margiana)
Chlorite or steatite, and limestone
3 3/4 in. (9.5 cm)
Gift of Norbert Schimmel Trust, 1989 (1989.281.41a,b)
Photo, information copyright: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Western Central Asia, now known as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and northern Afghanistan, has yielded objects attesting to a highly developed civilization in the late third and early second millennium B.C. Artifacts from the region indicate that there were contacts with Iran to the southwest.
Among the few three-dimensional images assigned to this period in Central Asia are a group of stone female figures seated or squatting on a platform and wearing a robe decorated with a pattern, perhaps imitating sheep's fleece. They are always composite figures of soft green chlorite or steatite, with heads of white limestone. This example has a typical abstract form with an armless body and legs represented by a protruding ledge.
Excavated examples of this figure type come from sites in Margiana in southern Turkmenistan, a possible center of their production. Similar seated females on cylinder seal impressions from southwestern Iran appear to depict royal figures. On compartmented stamp seals from western Central Asia, a possible version of the female figure appears where she is sometimes flanked by or seated upon animals or mythical creatures. These attributes could indicate a divine quality.
Statuette d'une divinite feminine vetue d'un kaunaks, appelee "Princesse de Bactriane''
Chlorite, calcite
Don de la Societe des Amis du Louvre, fevrier 2003
Departement des Antiquites orientales AO 31917
Photo, information: Copyright, the Louvre, Paris, France.
This small statuette is in fact made of three parts slotted together. The gown and hair are carved in chlorite, while the neck and face are in fine white limestone. The statuette is of a seated woman wearing a loose gown, crossed over on her back, which envelops her entire body. The general shape of her body is a sort of oval pebble with a horizontal shelf for the knees. Fewer than ten such statuettes of comparable quality survive. This statuette is remarkable for the soft, almost smiling expression on the woman's face. The Louvre already holds another such Bactrian princessÑa majestic statuette of a woman standing, but with the facial features barely suggested. These statuettes, generally known as Princesses, played a key role in Central Asian mythology, where they were worshipped as major goddesses. They ruled over the natural order, as the forces of nature were believed to be engaged in endless combat, requiring regulation by a superior force."
